British history

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“The Boer War marked the end of a period of territorial expansion of the empire, and led to a time of imperial rethinking and reorganization. The setbacks and defeats of the first stage of the war, and the unexpectedly long-drawn-out closing stage poured cold water over imperial enthusiasm, but they did not lead to any suggestion of imperial withdrawal. In the years after the war economic development and domestic reform received more attention than they had done for some years, but these new steps were sometimes expressed in the language of empire: the rehabilitation of South Africa after the Boer War was directed by ardent exponents of the imperial idea, and Liberals in Britain expressed their ideas for reform in a book entitled The Heart of the Empire. So much new land had been acquired, and so greatly had relations with some of the colonies changed that the task of administration was enough by itself to absorb all the energy that people were ready to devote to the empire. The colonies' idea of encouraging closer union by changing the tariff system was defeated so decisively in the British general election of 1906 that the idea could hardly flourish in that form for some years to come; the British idea of advancing to closer union by discussion of foreign policy and colonial contribution to defense spending made a certain amount of progress, but was never at the centre of men's minds.”
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“English self-satisfaction blossomed in the early eighteenth century. “I do not think there are people more prejudiced in its own favor,” wrote a Swiss visitor in 1727: 'They look on foreigners in general with contempt, and think nothing is as well done elsewhere as in their own country.' Hardly novel, that comforting conviction was strengthened by a sense of 'the many struggles which the people of this nation have had, to rescue their almost oppressed liberties and religion', until (according to a Whiggish writer in 1719) 'we are arrived at such a height of prosperity under the auspicious reign of our present august monarch, that we are become the envy of the neighboring states . . . and the terror of those that are our enemies'. Economic and military success supplied further vindication of England's unique constitutional and political arrangements. The popular catch-cry 'Liberty and Property' encapsulated the belief that 'both foreigners that live here, and natives, have great reason to be thankful to Providence'.”
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“THE Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain were pagan in their beliefs. Their burial customs give plain evidence of pagan ways of thought, and however widely Christianity may have been diffused in the Lowland Zone of Britain late in the fourth century, there can be no doubt that by c. 500 England southeast of the Fosse Way was predominantly, if not wholly, a pagan country once more. Yet if the evidence is adequate to demonstrate the fact, it tells us nothing about the manner in which the worship of the pagan gods was conducted. This is in part because the Anglo-Saxons normally built in wood and their pagan temples were in consequence much less durable than the solidly built stone structures of the Romano-British period, and in part because of the deliberate suppression of heathen memories by the Christian Church in later times. One of the complex of buildings which formed the royal palace at Old Yeavering in Northumberland is believed to have been a heathen temple which had subsequently been adapted to Christian use. We know that the principal centre of heathen worship among the Deirans lay at Goodmanham on the Yorkshire Wolds, and Bede has left us a vivid account of the destruction of the temple and its idols by Coifi, the heathen high priest. Eddius tells how Wilfrid and his companions, cast ashore by a storm on the coast of Sussex, found themselves confronted by the chief priest of the South Saxons who stood before them on a mound and sought to confound them by his magical arts.”
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British history term paper